Our overall objectives are to develop new clinical/analytical methodology that provides greater selectivity, sensitivity, speed and accuracy than conventional systems for the determination of a wide range of constituents in blood serum and urine. Preliminary studies indicate that these objectives can be accomplished for many constituents by utilizing the many unique features available on three computer-controlled automated clinical analyzers that were recently developed in our laboratories. These analyzers are to be used in both an automated investigative mode to study basic chemical reactions involved in development of analytical procedures for specific constitutents, and also in a high speed routine analytical mode for testing newly developed methods with large numbers of serum or urine samples. The automated instruments will be modified where necessary to utilize the most reliable chemical systems. Kinetic reactions involving high speed primary reactions will be developed where feasible to gain advantages of selectivity, speed, and overall reliability. Improved automated methods will be developed first for creatinine, free and bound calcium, phosphate, urea, glucose, and alcohol in serum samples. The automated elemental analyzer will be used for development of a procedure for determining total Ca, Mg, Na, K, Li, Fe, Zn, Cd, and Pb, in a serum sample, all within one minute per sample. The analytical methods will be characterized on a fundamental basis including basic characterizations of all transfer functions involved in the data domain conversions from the chemical domain into the final reported numbers.